


Water of the Womb, Blood of the Covenant

by Pyre_Prism



Series: Five Nights at Freddy's: Unfading [2]
Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: 'Older Brother' is being called Vincent Afton, 'missing scenes', I'm going with 'Reluctant Follower' is 'Vanny', Other, headcanon reliant, not necessarily in chronological order
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-01-27 16:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21395374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyre_Prism/pseuds/Pyre_Prism
Summary: Three generations. Two families. One convoluted story.---Moments in time between family members, captured and immortalised for your viewing pleasure… Headcanon-reliant, but mostly canon-compliant as well. Largely revolves around ‘missing scenes’, and some may be expanded into their own separate stories.
Series: Five Nights at Freddy's: Unfading [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1545859
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27





	1. In the Orchard

It was a sunny afternoon, a rarity that the two siblings took delight in capitalising on. They took their time walking away from the school grounds, the younger sister swinging their joined hands in tandem with the jaunty melody she sang. With a wry smile that made him look much older than the ten-year-old he truly was, the brother shook his head, letting her prance happily.

Both of the Afton children had the same straight black hair and pale skin, although their eyes couldn’t be more different. His were like shards of ice, a strange mixture of grey, blue, and even purple, always watching and always thinking; hers were warm and cheery, gleaming green and ever-ready to sparkle with wonder, usually fixed on her beloved brother… even while he gazed steadily into the distance.

William felt a stronger-than-normal tug on his hand, drawing his attention fully to his sister, and he arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

She giggled. “I love you! Thank you for waiting, today.”

“Cassie, I’d have waited, no matter what. You know that. Father wouldn’t like it if I came home without you, you know,” he stated, shaking his head again. “And I love you, too.” A small path caught his gaze, trailing away from the road they were traveling down, and he grinned. “Hey, come with me… I want to show you something.”

The eight-year-old hummed, obliging without complaint. “What is it, Will? Are we going to a secret hideout? Oh, or a portal to somewhere that all our toys come to life and we’re the king and queen? Maybe—…”

He tuned her babble out with practiced ease, leading her down the overgrown path and offering the occasional hum or grunt of affirmation or dismissal at random intervals. Ever since she’d been born, his sister had the strangest imagination he’d ever encountered… to the point that he’d long-since given up trying to keep track of her bouts of whimsy. After around ten minutes, the path opened up into a small clearing with a crumpled and rotten wooden fence, which they clambered over to reach their destination.

It was an old apple orchard, with no sign of anyone having been there for what might as well have been ‘forever’.

“Tada!” William crowed, letting go of his sister’s hand to raise his arms and spin on the spot. “What do you think? I found this place a month ago, and I think we can have it all to ourselves.”

As he’d expected, Cassidy began to bounce on the balls of her feet, doing so for all of a minute before she hugged him tightly and ran up to a few withered trees in quick succession. “This is great! It’s like something in a fairy tale –we really could make this a secret hideout, too!”

“Come on, you’ll like it even better in the centre,” he said, guiding her through the rows of trunks until they reached another small clearing filled with wildflowers, swamping the green carpet with spots of colour. William watched his sister squeal and dive headfirst into a particularly tall patch of flowers with a fond smile. “So, are you a fairy princess, today?”

“Nope! I’m a pirate princess!” she laughed. Cassidy rearranged her limbs to sit primly on the grass, hands already snapping the stems of flowers in her reach. “Do you want to be my first-mate?”

Snorting softly, he sat down opposite her, plucking a few flowers of his own and handing them to her. “I shouldn’t have read Treasure Island to you,” he bemoaned dramatically, before laughing under his breath. “Are you sure you don’t want me to be a navy officer, or a rival pirate captain?”

She hummed thoughtfully as her hands deftly wove the stems together into a wreath. “Maybe…” After a moment of silence, Cassidy grinned at her brother. “Oh, I know! You can be a pirate king, and we’re both after the same treasure.” Satisfied with her idea, she nodded and handed him the first wreath. “Your crown, your majesty.”

William took the offered gift with an exaggerated grimace. “Cassie… Boys don’t like flowers as much as girls do,” he teased, only to frown as her face fell. “…You really have gotten better at getting what you want, haven’t you?”

Her crestfallen expression disappeared the moment he placed the wreath on his head. “No, I haven’t, but Mother said she’d teach me someday.”

Again, he arched an eyebrow, coupling it with a smirk. “Is that so? That sounds much more interesting than Father wanting me to learn real estate.” Pale eyes rolled and he heaved a sigh. “I still don’t know what ‘unreal estate’ is supposed to be, though.”

“It’s imaginary, of course.” Cassidy stated in a serious tone as she placed a new wreath atop her own head. She maintained that demeanour for all of a few seconds before giggling, with William joining in moments later. “Now! We need ships! Pirates aren’t pirates without ships.” Looking around at the trees closest to them, she pointed at a couple that had low branches and stood close to each other. “Those ones… Arr, land-ho, matey!” With that, she scrambled to her feet and set about scaling one of the trunks.

Their game lasted for an hour or so without issue, aside from the scraping of knuckles and knees from the rough bark. William relished it, a smile never far from his lips. As his own studies had grown more serious and complex, he’d been forced to spend less and less time with his sister, which in turn had made her more inclined to demand his attention at the most inopportune times. It was nice to simply be siblings for once, away from the overbearing gaze of their mother and the stern stare of their father.

Playing these ridiculous games of make-believe was like a much-needed breath of fresh air.

As the shadows started to grow long and dark, Cassidy lowered the stick she’d claimed as a sword, a pout replacing her earlier grin. “I’m hungry…”

William paused mid-lunge and shrugged. “Just eat one of the apples or something.”

She sent him a disgusted look. “Ew! No, they’re gross! Let’s go home. Mother said that we’re going to have something new and tasty for dinner tonight.” Turning back to where their schoolbags sat forgotten on the grass, Cassidy pitched her voice higher. “Come on, it’s getting late, and I’m getting cold, too…”

His fingers twitched around the makeshift sword in his grip before releasing it entirely in favour of plucking one of the vaguely-more appetising apples from the tree closest to him. “But we’re having so much fun… Do you really want to stop, now?” he asked, glancing up from the too-soft fruit to pin his sister with a flat stare. “I don’t, not yet…” Holding out the fruit for her to take, William scowled when she stuck out her tongue and went to pick up her bag.

“I said no, and that apple’s all stinky. I’m not eating it.” A shudder rocked the girl’s body. “I really am getting cold, though…”

Irritation transformed into a sudden blaze of fury. Weren’t they having fun, for the first time in weeks? Weren’t things better for them away from their parents’ command-ridden influence? Wasn’t him going along with the game she wanted to play enough? His fingers clenched, crushing the fruit slightly; he was going to make sure they could keep playing… and to do that, Cassidy needed to eat something –being cold could be fixed by moving around some more.

William thought back, trying to remember if he’d left anything uneaten in his bag, but came up empty. He grit his teeth. “Cassie… I’m sorry. We’ll head back soon,” he lied, only realising exactly what had come out of his mouth after he’d already moved to join her. “Look, let me just… get something, and then we’ll get on with it, okay?”

He dropped the apple, wiping his hand on his uniform before digging into his bag. When no lingering articles of food met his search, he hissed through his teeth. Nothing… that wouldn’t do, that wouldn’t do at all. With a grimace that he smothered with a too-wide grin, he looked back up at his sister, who was watching him impatiently; his hand sought out the discarded fruit… he had just one option left that didn’t require them to leave the orchard…

The next thing he knew, William was sitting on top of Cassidy, one hand bunched in the front of her own uniform and the other pressing the rotten apple as far into her mouth as it would go. He blinked and frowned, wondering why she wasn’t trying to get up, or even why she wasn’t eating it like he wanted her to.

Oddly numb, he realised that she wasn’t awake, so he clambered off and sat beside her, settling down to watch as she slept.

Around him, the shadows grew even longer and darker while he waited. Worry began to nip at the edges of his mind… had he hurt her more than he realised? Was that why she lost consciousness? Luckily, William didn’t need to wait for long before Cassidy coughed herself awake again; his relief didn’t last long, however, as she dissolved into tears and incomprehensible wailing the moment her eyes met his own.

William’s earlier fury surged back to the front of his mind, and he was back on top of her with his hand clenched around something cool and solid. “Quiet! I’m sorry, okay, I didn’t mean—…!” Whatever he was trying to say was drowned out –even to his own ears– by her cries as they rose in volume. His face stretched into another too-wide grin; ‘always aim to smile, William, people like it when you smile and they listen when they like you’, their father’s voice rang out in the back of his mind. “Stop screaming!”

His hand came down on her chest, hard and fast, over and over and over and over. She just wouldn’t stop or even let him speak, and he only wanted her to be quiet enough for him to try to explain himself…

Warmth bloomed under his hands and across his face.

He blinked… there was no sound in the clearing. Cassidy had finally been silenced. His grin turned into a smile, and he breathed a sigh of relief; finally, some peace and quiet. Looking down at his sister, however, tore the smile from his face entirely.

Her eyes were open… but they were dull, no longer sparkling with life, and her skin and clothes were covered in splatters of deep red…

William swallowed thickly and scrambled to get off of her, his hands beginning to shake, sending a pair of scissors held in one of them to the ground. He stared blankly at the tool –when had he grabbed them?– then at the hand it had fallen from.

Both were almost completely covered in the same red that she was.

Without another thought, he grabbed his schoolbag and ran.

**~*~**

William snuck through the front door well after nightfall, only to be met with the disapproving glare of his father, which turned shocked and angry at the state of his uniform. The boy froze in the entryway, his eyes stinging with tears and his lower lip trembling. His mother hurried into view from the kitchen.

“Are they back?” she asked, her voice thick with too many emotions for William to begin to categorise, leaving him reeling when she rounded the last corner and caught sight of him… and shrieked. “Will?! What… Where’s Cassidy?!” Her hands quickly found their way to his face, his shoulders, patting and stroking as if to chase away her distress via his body.

“…What happened?” the Afton family patriarch rumbled through grit teeth, his expression hardening further the longer he glared at his son. “There had better be a good reason why you’re covered in blood.”

He couldn’t reply to either of them, his throat closing up and his mind blanking. What could he say? How could he tell them anything? William tried to force back the urge to burst into hysterical cries, and shook his head. His father said something else, but he barely registered the words. “Can’t…” he whispered hoarsely.

“Oh, honestly dear, let’s at least get him cleaned up a bit, first,” his mother said, cutting through the building haze in his mind as she guided William with shaking hands to the bathroom. She focused on his face first, swiping and rubbing with a damp cloth. “Come, now, darling. We really do need to know what happened…” she implored sweetly after several minutes. “It’s only natural to worry when someone you love doesn’t come home when you think they will.”

“…Sorry…” he managed at last, the tightness in his throat loosening slightly with each care-laden action his mother made. “Didn’t mean to make anyone worry…”

She nodded. “I know you didn’t, Will. You’re too much of a good son for that.”

“Feeling better enough to tell us, now?” his father interjected from the bathroom doorway, and William’s spine snapped ramrod-straight at the still-icy tone in the man’s voice. “Where is your sister?”

After a long and heavy pause, he finally managed to conjure up an answer. “Cassie… got hurt. Bad. She’s… she wasn’t moving.” William took a deep breath and forced himself to meet his father’s gaze. “I think she’s dead. We were walking home, but she wanted to play a game, so we did, and… I’m so sorry… the trees weren’t even that tall… I didn’t think it’d turn out like this…!” He shuddered; he could feel his mother’s hands tightening on his shoulders, while his father’s face became thunderous for a moment before the man turned on his heel and stalked away. “I just wanted to play…”

His mother shushed him, running her fingers through his hair for a while before telling him to clean himself up the rest of the way and leaving to fetch him some clean clothes. In the silence left behind, William shuddered and gripped his head tightly.

He didn’t mean to.

He really didn’t mean to.

Chills crept up his spine, drawing his attention to the mirror set above the sink… Something was there, in the space behind him, pale and mist-like and… it had a face… a face he knew all too well… His breath hitched and his eyes widened.

A whisper drifted into his ears, and he cried out, punching the mirror and spinning on the spot –there was nothing there… but the whisper could still be heard.

_“It’s me…”_


	2. Like a Clown

The first thing Michael noticed when he opened the basement workshop was how untouched everything was. When Vincent had told him that the place had stayed closed since their father’s disappearance, he clearly hadn’t been kidding. The second thing he noticed was the thick metallic scent that permeated the air, even through the nose- and throat-tickling dust.

He frowned. Vince’s letter had been worded strangely, and the vague nature of the phrasing would have been enough to prompt him to investigate, even if he didn’t have his own reasons to want answers.

“Okay, let’s see what you’re hiding, father…” he muttered, stepping into the room and making a beeline for the drawing table. Memories of pulling a stool into place to watch and ask all sorts of questions about anything that crossed his mind while the man worked away at some new design left Michael’s hands trembling as he shuffled through the papers for a bit, before he turned to the set of drawers to one side. Each one slid open without complaint, and he rifled through their contents with detached interest until an envelope caught his attention.

It was addressed to him, and written in his father’s ‘careful handwriting’ –as opposed to his ‘thinking too quickly scrawl’, which was never that legible to anyone other than himself and presumably Henry, in his capacity as his business partner. Mike wasted no time in grabbing it and leaving the room for the clearer air of the ground floor of the property.

Sitting down on the sofa, he opened the envelope and pulled out the letter held within, raising an eyebrow at the multiple pages his father had penned for him, before settling down to actually read it.

**~*~**

_Michael, if you’re reading this, then something clearly went wrong._

He snorted. “Yeah, you vanished.”

_I can only assume that Vincent did as I asked and sought your help with my workshop. Firstly, I’d like to thank you –both of you– for that. I’m not sure what Henry <strike>or your mother</strike> might do to what’s in there, without my input, so… again, thank you._

“Why would he be worried about Uncle Henry? They worked together on pretty much everything…” he asked, a frown crawling into place.

_There are so many things that I wish I could say in person, but I suppose that time is more of the essence than doing it the more… conventional way. I’ll have to ask that you read through the whole thing, before you do anything. What I’m going to share isn’t something I’m entirely proud of. It hurts –to recall, to write… and no doubt, to read as well._

_Your brother already knows some of this, <strike>of course</strike>, I’ve kept it from you for too long, though._

_Ah, it seems I’m trying to deflect. I’ll get back on track…_

_Do you remember those nightmares you used to have?_

Chills raced along Michael’s nerves, and he shuddered. Nightmares? Like the ones with monstrous versions of his father’s creations? Ones that Vincent also had, if his occasional drunken rants over the phone were anything to go by?

_They… they were ultimately my doing._

“What the…?” he hissed through gritted teeth, his fingers creasing and almost-tearing at the paper. “How did he… Why did he…?!”

_I know you’re likely very upset right now, but I implore you to keep reading. We were scared, Henry and I, after what happened to not only Elizabeth, but also to his daughter, Charlotte… So we used something I’d been working on to make our animatronics seem all the more real, combined them with a similar device that he’d been working on, and crafted horrors. I was furious with him, at first, but… I can’t deny that I enjoyed seeing for myself what those little devices were capable of._

A quiet growl left him before he could catch himself. “Sadistic bastard… Or should I be saying ‘bastards’…? Never knew Uncle Henry had it in him… supposing you’re telling the truth.”

_Henry hoped to steer you away from all of them, I think, whereas I just wanted to keep you away from the ones that were dangerous –the ones that were built to be dangerous– but obviously, I failed._

_Vincent has probably apologised to you at every opportunity; he never seemed to forgive himself for what happened, even after I…_

_No, now I’m getting a little mixed up. I really had planned on telling this in order, but now I fear I’ve skipped around slightly. Forgive me for that._

_The main reason I’m writing this is Elizabeth._

Michael felt his stomach twist. He barely even remembered his sister, but her absence had been felt almost as potently as that of their mother –if not more so– throughout his childhood. Memories of before he turned seven were fragmented and scattered, but both of them had already vanished by then… Died, he’d been told…

_She’s… When you were four, I had set up another series of animatronic characters, after things temporarily went south for the Freddy Fazbear name. They were to be largely clownlike, and one named ‘Circus Baby’ was to be the central figure. She was a masterpiece, really, yet…_

_There really isn’t any way around this… I’m not entirely who you may think I am._

“At this point, I don’t know if any of us knew who you actually are…” Mike grumbled, grimacing at the bitterness in his voice. He didn’t want to blame a member of his own family for something without some kind of evidence, but he’d had suspicions ever since his father had left him in Henry’s care and disappeared without a trace.

_Maybe you’ve already found some of the research notes, or even some of the machines; those children who disappeared were killed for that research… and Baby was… part of it. Elizabeth loved her, though, and she got too close._

_Baby killed your sister._

_However, Lizzy isn’t gone._

_I know it sounds crazy… God knows your mother thought so, but it’s true. I need your help, Mike. She’s angry, she blames me for what happened –rightly so, if I’m being honest– but she adores you… I believe she’ll listen to you._

_I need you to put her back together._

_Like I did for you, after Fredbear… after Vincent… <strike>killed you</strike>._

The ink was blotted and smeared across the angry scribble at the end of the sentence, forcing him to squint and peer closer to read more than a few letters; a cold knot manifested in his gut as he mouthed the word ‘kill’, eyes wide and hands falling to rest in his lap. Michael could dimly remember the Fredbear character being one he liked, until those nightmares had turned that appreciation into fear… but being killed by him? Or by his own brother?

That made no sense… Mike was still alive.

_I’m sorry. This… this is turning into something of a mess, isn’t it? I’ll stick to the simpler things, perhaps?_

_Please, go to the basement. There’s a door there that leads deeper underground, to Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental. You may need to become a member of staff to access the facility without much issue, but supposing you aren’t reading this too long after I… left… it should still be operational. Elizabeth is there. One of the pages in the envelope is a letter of recommendation for whoever’s in charge of the place at the moment, so long as I’ve arranged things correctly, which should let you bypass some of the paperwork and idiocy._

_Maybe… maybe you’ll understand things better after you do this for me._

_I love you, Michael, even if I had trouble showing you…_

_Please tell your brother that I love him, too, and that I don’t blame him._

_The blame is mine. It’s almost all mine, for everything._

_Your father, William Afton._


	3. One More Dance

It was with a heavy sigh that Angela Afton set aside her empty cup and glanced yet again at the clock on the wall. Not for the first time, she wished that the timepiece was wrong –that it was perhaps tuned to a completely different part of the world…

She couldn’t keep doing this.

Her husband hadn’t come out of his workshop for longer than a few minutes since the hands had shown the time to be ‘6:20’… and now, they said ‘4:50’. Angela had waited the entire day to see and speak with him, to just… find some way of picking up the pieces after everything that happened; their son needed to know that he was still there… _she_ needed to know that.

William had never been the most affectionate of men, but she’d never known him to shut out his family so completely, at least not since they left England so long ago and he was doing so with his parents. Then again… this was the second painful loss that they’d had to deal with…

Sighing again, Angela rubbed her face and stood up, making her way down to the basement. If William wouldn’t come out on his own, then she’d just have to force the issue. There was no way she could handle simply waiting for him to realise that losing another child didn’t mean that the one who still remained no longer mattered… let alone that he wasn’t the only one in mourning.

He needed to be a family man as well as a grieving father.

She knocked loudly on the door when she reached it, waiting a moment before pushing it open and stepping inside. The basement workshop was well-lit, as she’d expected, with shelves and tables filled to the brim with signs of his work –his robots, and the wiring that allowed them to emulate thought. In one corner, a large humanlike figure stood in a ballet pose, and Angela blinked a few times before tiredly registering that it was one of the animatronics that had been intended to join the cast at the failed new franchise…

…The one that Elizabeth had died at, on its opening day.

Her hands tightened into fists. “Why’s that thing here?” she muttered angrily as a pained grimace spread across her face. Breathing harshly through her nose, Angela tore her gaze away from the robot and searched for her husband, finding him slumped over his drawing table in the corner opposite to the white and blue pile of metal. “Will? William, wake up,” she urged, shaking one of his shoulders.

A low groan greeted her efforts, and she pulled a smile into place as bleary eyes slit open to look at her. “…Angie? What…?”

“You’ve been working for almost the whole day. Time to come to bed; you’ll wind up with a sore back if you sleep here.” Angela chided softly, giving his shirt a light tug. Relief turned her smile honest as he obligingly straightened and stretched. “Don’t you get tired spending so long in here without other people? Henry hasn’t been by for over a week, so you must’ve gotten lonely.”

“Been busy.” William offered through a yawn, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the ballerina robot. “She’s not working right…”

She couldn’t help the return of her earlier grimace at that. “Darling, you spend too much time with your robots… your family needs you right now. Vince has been—…”

“I know what he’s been doing.”

Angela froze. Had she imagined the icy undertone? “He says he’s been having nightmares about the animatronics,” she continued, choosing her words carefully. When William let out a low chuckle, she grit her teeth against the chill that licked at her spine. “Will, it’s not funny.”

Drawing himself up to his full height, he suddenly wrapped his arms around her, gripping tightly enough to make it uncomfortable. “I’m sorry. It’s just that… he is the one who—…”

“Vincent loved Michael. He didn’t mean to kill him, it was just a stupid accident.” Angela retorted, pushing at his chest to get him to let go. “There’ve been too many accidents with those robots, I’m actually starting to think we should just… scrap them all. First Lizzy, then Mike? What’s next, we lose Vince too?”

William’s grip tightened further, and she gulped as a quiet growl reached her ears. “I’m not going to let that happen… Besides, Elizabeth isn’t dead, and I’m going to fix Michael, too.”

She shoved him, taking a few steps away once he let her go, and shook her head. “You’re not making any sense, Will. Too much stress and not enough sleep… Just come to bed, we’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?” It was hard to tear her eyes away from his stare, and she could feel it track her every move as she strode towards the entrance… only for the door to slam shut just as she reached it. Spinning on her heel, Angela glared at William; he merely smiled in response, waving a remote control in one hand. “Open the door, dear.”

“You say I’m not making sense… I just want to show you what I mean, Angie.” William grinned, showing a few too many teeth to ease her nerves, and the look in his eyes made her body inch further away from him. They started out wide, before sliding partially-closed and almost seeming to gleam in the artificial lighting. “I probably should have told you about this a long time ago, but considering everything else that’s been happening, I can’t truly be blamed for it slipping my mind…”

“William…? Will, really, what are you going on about?” she tried to ignore how her hands and voice shook, how his grin seemed to widen when he noticed.

“What are your thoughts on the topic of ghosts?”

Angela frowned slightly. Had her husband finally lost his mind out of grief, enough to turn to the supernatural as a form of comfort? “They don’t exist, darling.” She steeled herself and moved closer to him, holding out a hand. “Please, let’s just go to bed. I don’t want to argue with you, and… you’re starting to scare me.”

“You wanted to know what had Henry and I so… enthralled, didn’t you? You and your sister? It’s called ‘Remnant’… and it’s _fascinating_.” William’s grin morphed into a smile, fond and amused and it was so comforting to realise that he could still make such an expression that Angela closed the distance between them and placed her hands on his upper arms. “It’s keeping Lizzy here, and I can use it to give Mikey back his life…”

“When Pam and I wanted to know what your project was, neither of us thought you were dealing in things that can’t possibly be real…” she murmured. “They’re dead, Will… there’s no coming back for them… But Vincent and I are still here, and we need you to stay with us, not going on some wild goose chase.” Watching his face –his entire body– drain of its liveliness and the spark of mad hope made her heart clench agonisingly, and she was forced to tighten her hold to keep him from falling like a puppet with its strings cut. Angela guided him back into the chair she’d found him in, cradling his head against her stomach when he crumpled forward.

They spent several long minutes like that, enough that the front of her dress grew damp from her husband’s tears. “I can fix them… I know I can…” was muffled against her body, sounding more like a plea than anything else, and she ran her fingers through his hair –much like she had hours ago for their son when he’d begged her to leave a flashlight on his bedside table, ‘for blinding the monsters’. Angela shushed him, forcing back her own tears at the same time.

Just as she had for months, she wondered what their family had done to deserve all of this…

“I miss them too… every time I pass by something that reminds me of them, I feel like breaking down,” she admitted. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to change what happened… it’s just not something we can do. We’re only human, Will.” She felt him go still and silent, and –hoping he was finally taking what she said on-board for consideration– she continued. “Bringing people back from the dead is the realm of fantasy, no matter what this ‘remnant’ stuff is or does.”

William pulled away enough to look up at her with a strangely-blank expression, made eerie by the still-damp trails down his face. “…You don’t believe me at all, do you?”

The chill that had threatened her earlier returned with a vengeance, and she swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat. “I _want_ to… but no. No, I don’t. I can’t…” Angela watched him close his eyes and take a deep breath, watched him stand again and make his way over to the animatronic, screwdriver in-hand, watched him say something to the unresponsive metal figure as he opened up its face-plates to reveal an endoskeleton comprised of coiled cables. Once more, she raised a hand towards him; she needed to get him to understand. “…I know you take pride in your creations, and rightly-so. They’re phenomenal, and the customers love them… but they’re just metal. They aren’t people, Will, and right now, you need people.”

He growled, shooting her a harsh glare that made her breath hitch. “What I need is peace and quiet. Ballora, here, won’t repair herself, and I’m not someone who can comfort a person I still…” he cut himself off with a sigh. “I can’t help but blame him, sometimes, Angie… Worse still, I blame myself… and Henry…”

“Henry? What does he have to do with Michael’s death?” she asked with a frown, feeling a little lost. “I mean, yes, he’s the one who made Fredbear, but…”

“…It doesn’t matter.” After a moment, William tossed the remote to her. “Go on. I don’t think I’ll be coming up to bed tonight… I… I just need to fix _something_! I’m sick of not being able to fix what goes wrong!”

Catching the remote after fumbling for a bit, Angela stared at her husband in wide-eyed shock, and it took her a moment to find her voice again. “You don’t have to fix everything, though…”

“Yes, I do!” he snapped, rounding on her, holding the screwdriver less like it was a tool and more like it was some kind of weapon. With each stride he took, she matched it with one of her own, until he’d backed her up against the wall. “Elizabeth died because I didn’t keep a close enough eye on her, because she wanted to play with an animatronic that was _designed to kill people_! And Michael… Mike was terrorised by nightmares, wasn’t he? Dreams that were caused by something I made! I made sure that the bear’s endoskeleton was overly-powerful… I wanted to see how strong we could make them, and, by God, did I succeed!” he exclaimed, raising his arms in a parody of victory.

“William… what… what are you saying…?”

A dark chuckle bubbled out of the pale man as he leaned in to whisper into her ear. “I’m saying that they’re dead because of me…” The chuckle mutated into something closer to a sob. “I killed them… because I can’t leave these half-arsed… because I didn’t act soon enough when people started screaming… because I turned the ‘bots into death-traps.” Angela stayed perfectly still as she felt him press his forehead into the crook of her neck and shoulder. “Henry and I made Baby… she killed Lizzy. Henry and I made Fredbear, and he killed Michael… there’s no way around it.”

“Will, you couldn’t have known that would happen…” she tried. He’d had his moments where he was… less than normal, but this was the first time she’d heard him claim guilt. It made her blood run cold. “Come on, you’re tired, you probably don’t even mean this…”

“…Then there’s the others, but then again, they weren’t killed like that…” William murmured, sounding almost amused, only to hiss when she started to push him away again. “Don’t… please don’t…”

Her body began to shake, as if their positions –or perhaps the conversation– had triggered some deep instinct in her that screamed ‘get away, you’re in danger’. “You’re scaring me, dear. I… I think you’re having another episode.”

“…You may be right… but, what if I’m not?” She swallowed again and opened her mouth to respond, only for pain to bloom in her neck before she could say anything else. He murmured sweetly to her, even as one of his hands came up to cover her mouth. “Don’t worry, Angie… you’ll believe me about Remnant by this time tomorrow, I think… As I said, I won’t let my family die and disappear… Maybe you’ll save me a dance, my dear ballerina?”

**~*~**

_Sounds of weeping guided her back to consciousness, and she groggily searched for the source of the noise. The room she was in was vaguely familiar. A factory? No… a workshop. Like his. She couldn’t find where the crying was coming from, until she looked down at her feet._

_A thin man sat on the floor before her, his purple shirt crumpled from overuse and his black hair sticking up in all sorts of angles. Almost-translucent skin seemed to be drawn tightly over his sharp features, throwing every dip into harsh shadow and making his face appear skull-like. His eyes –swimming with tears as he stared up at her– were a tinted silver._

_It was William… and he was crying…? He’d never done so, not like this, never where she –anyone– could see him express such weakness… She tried to move, to comfort him, but her body refused to obey her commands._

_“Why…? Why aren’t you there, Angie? Didn’t I do it right?” he sobbed, his hands twitching in his lap as if he didn’t know what to do with them. “Please, say something… It only took Lizzy a few hours to settle in, so why is it different now? Ballora shouldn’t be that different compared to Baby, so… Angela, please… answer me!”_

_All of a sudden, she was struck with such powerful hatred towards the man in front of her that she would have staggered if she were able to. Her neck and chest exploded in agony, stabbing pains digging in to her mind. He hurt her… to do what, exactly? What was he trying to do? Why could she not move, and… what was this about their daughter?_

_He pushed himself to his feet and staggered over to one of the benches at the other side of the room. “…I suppose this counts as a failure…” William muttered bitterly as he collapsed into the nearest chair, running his hands through his hair. “Back to the drawing board… Does it not work for adults…?”_

_She watched him for another few minutes, struggling to move or speak, fuming at him and almost frantic to actually do something to the man to snap him out of whatever he was doing._

_This could not end well for the man she had thought she loved._


	4. Leveret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set at a time closer to the VR game... a.k.a. after everything else, basically.

Glitchtrap always felt it when someone new logged into the game, like a feather-light touch along his spine from the tip of his tail all the way up through to the tips of his ears. Every mind that synchronised with the digitised reality had its own cadence… and the smile that stretched across his face widened even further; he did so love to play with new people.

Finding them was easy –almost too easy, as ever– and in moments, he’d floated through the game’s code and had taken up a comfortable vantage point on one of the table-shaped props behind the newcomer. For the time being, he wasn’t worried about being seen –he eagerly awaited the event, actually– but it was always nice to get some understanding of his new friend before starting to truly play with them.

This time, it was a young woman; he pressed a hand to his muzzle as a reminder to keep quiet, despite the snicker that wanted to bubble up. The last woman to play with him had been so serious, so… well, so un-fun, in many ways. But, the effort of getting a rise out of her had been more than worth it, in the end.

He was getting distracted. Again.

This woman –_child_, his mind insisted, which just made his code hum with anticipation all the more– was investigating the table in front of her, oblivious to anything else that might be there with her. _So naïve_…

The people who programmed the game had arranged it so that players would ultimately be placed at that table, where they could then push buttons and flip levers that would take them to the different parts of the game, only to return each time they were done. To go alongside the apparent theme of the thing, the room around the player –and him, but no-one seemed to want to admit that he existed– was designed to resemble one of the old Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza locations, complete with tables set up for some child’s party, doors leading out to what would have been the staff-only areas and the toilets, and a stage shrouded in a purple curtain standing opposite the player.

She seemed to be focused on the task of familiarising herself with her mind’s new playground –even if her body in the real world stayed largely the same, he could tell that she was… becoming well-acclimatised to everything… more so than most had, from what he could see. He sat himself more comfortably on his chosen table, tilting his head as she set about starting one of the minigames, her digital body dissolving into scraps of code as her mind was transported to the correct place.

He waited, humming to himself and smoothing out the suede-like fur on his arms, his fingers deftly skipping over the stitches holding the visualisation of his body together; he didn’t want to know what may happen if they were plucked too strongly. Once he was done grooming his arms, he moved on to doing the same with his head and legs, ears and whiskers twitching all the while as his eyes scanned the room with an unblinking stare.

What was taking her so long? Or had his sense of time gone so thoroughly out the window that he no longer knew how to gauge such things?

How long had it been since he’d even had the luxury of using a clock?

Waiting any longer didn’t appeal to him, so he sprang to his feet and meandered around the room, fiddling idly with the controls on the Player’s Table for a bit before slipping behind the curtain and sprawling himself out on the stage, heedless of the animatronics that already stood there –they weren’t the real things, and could barely respond properly when he did anything to them, so he’d already decided to leave them be… Any traces of the spirits they housed in the real world was long gone, as far as he was concerned.

It wasn’t like a spirit could delete him, either… not when humans couldn’t.

Then again, he did always come back, didn’t he? And with such a new environment to play in, he couldn’t see any way for that to ever not be true, not now and not ever.

The longer fur on his chest bristled with a burst of static, and he focused his attention through the gap in the purple fabric. She was back, and seemed a little frustrated, if the furrowed brow was anything to go by. He couldn’t tell much about the finer details of her appearance –fresh faces to the game took a while to manifest anything like that– but there was something about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on…

Something… familiar.

He slipped back out into the main room. A green film appeared to cover his body the moment he entered her line of sight –somehow shielding him from it– and he capitalised on this to creep close enough to peer at her face. His eyes lit up with a vivid purple glow at the same time that he reached out with strands of his own code to prod at her mind; interfacing with either the digitised echo that was meant to protect her or directly with the real thing, through the headset she wore in the real world.

She shuddered, almost as if she felt it. That didn’t make sense, not when she was so new to this virtual reality… He snickered, brushing the thought aside for the time being with a flick of an ear. His search wasn’t in vain, not entirely.

He knew her name.

Vanessa.

Such a pretty name, so much better than the one he’d taken for his own, and oh, what was this? A connection to one of his other playmates?

Memories danced back to the forefront of his mind, and he withdrew behind the stage curtain once more to process them without any chance of ruining his game before it had the chance to begin.

He’d always particularly liked playing with people named Jeremy –or Fritz, or Susie, or Vince, or Gabriel, or Will, or Charlie, or Mikey, or Henry, or Cassie, or Lizzy, or Angie, or Pam– and the one she seemed to be following after was no different. He’d been the first digital friend to see him, and he’d also been the first to stop coming back for more. The man was smart enough to realise that a golden rabbit like him didn’t really belong in the game, as it was designed, yet wasn’t smart enough to stop coming back for more until it was too late.

He wondered how this Jeremy had died… Last he saw of the man, he had urged him to make a mask, after all… Human faces were so… identifiable. Facial recognition software rarely worked on bunnies, but Jeremy didn’t seem to like rabbits…

No matter. He had a new playmate now. Pretty little Vanessa… a leveret just waiting to have fun… Perhaps she’d like to stay with him for longer?

He did get so lonely, stuck in this digital world without any friends…


	5. Predator and Prey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some… very deliberate spelling errors in this one. How I write the speech of one of the characters in this is done to imply how it’s supposed to sound… Also, this has now been expanded into a same-titled story of its own as the first chapter.

Very few things could scare him anymore… which is something that he occasionally regretted. With long nights spent scouring old research notes and pouring over faded blueprints, let alone tracking down every piece of the gruesome legacy of Fazbear Entertainment, Vincent Afton rarely had any free time to spare for such small details as holding down a job.

Even he needed to eat, though, and while he could survive on limited resources, he couldn’t conjure up food.

It had been a relief, then, when someone reached out to him; the younger brother of an old friend from his high school days had found out about his family’s connection to the Freddy Fazbear franchise and had offered him a job –security detail for Fazbear’s Fright, an upcoming ‘celebration’ of the brand’s past.

A history of missing kids and corpse-stench on the mascot animatronics could spawn veritable urban legends, if left to fester long enough, it seemed…

With nothing better to choose from, and already having interest in the horror attraction, Vincent had accepted… although the fact that he’d also been volunteered as an actor for the role of some fictitious security guard without his knowledge was something that he still had to ‘talk’ to his employer about. He honestly wasn’t sure if he could even pretend to be scared by what ultimately amounted to props and costume pieces in an atmosphere-heavy environment.

Not when he knew some of the real horrors associated with the Fazbear brand.

He could still hear the crunch of an animatronic bear’s jaws around his little brother’s skull, every time he tried to fall asleep… It sickened him to realise that, after a few decades, he no longer forgot to breathe at the sound –he didn’t deserve to breathe so easily when he’d been the one to put Mike’s head in there.

The fact that their father had somehow fixed the catastrophic injury –despite having no medical training to speak of– still haunted him… even though he’d read every piece of the man’s writing that he could get his hands on –the pieces that his uncle hadn’t locked away, that is.

Vincent shook his head roughly, pulling a tired half-smile onto his face as he passed one of the day-guards on his way into his current workplace; he really should ask her what her name was, maybe grab a drink or something. It was his third night on the job –with his shift actually starting in ten minutes, once the clock hit midnight– so he thought that he should try this ‘social life’ thing that everyone raved over.

He snorted to himself and readjusted his grip on his backpack; what a messed-up Cinderella he’d make.

The trip to the security office from the back door was a short one, and he quickly dropped his bag on the desk, peeked through the dirty window in the wall just behind it, then sat himself down on the squeaky swivel chair that was to be his makeshift throne for the next six hours. On his first night, he’d spent most of the time meandering his way through the dirty rooms and corridors while only half-listening to his young employer babble on about all of the ‘cool and spooky’ things the attraction had coming its way. On the second night, he’d stayed in the office and debated his life choices while rifling idly through the box of animatronic parts they’d left in the corner by the door…

Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put ‘authenticity’ above ‘fire safety’? His boss, apparently. It had been a whole thirty years since the last Fazbear pizza left their doors, and the building that was intended to be a memorial of sorts –and a cash-grab, if he was being honest– should have at least tried to make sure that this building was safer than those that inspired it in the first place.

Shaking his head, Vincent turned to the prop they’d set up just outside of the office. “You wouldn’t stand for this, either, would you, Freddy?” The empty ursine head and torso remained still and silent. “…And I’m talking to myself. Great.” As if on-cue, his phone rang, and he took a deep breath before answering it and putting it on speaker. “Showtime, Vince.”

“Hey, man! Okay, I have some awesome news for you,” came the cheery voice, skipping any of the typical preamble. “First of all, we found some vintage audio training cassettes –dude, these are, like, prehistoric!”

Vincent rolled his eyes. “Yeah, definitely ‘prehistoric’…” he muttered, reaching for the control tablet on his right to begin a sweep of the various cameras set up around the building.

His employer continued as if he’d stayed entirely quiet, saying something about having the tapes play for the visitors that would start coming the following week. He wasn’t entirely paying attention, though, and was instead grimacing in increasingly-exaggerated ways at the poor image quality from each and every camera he checked.

“I have an even better surprise for you –and you’re not gonna believe this. We found one, a real one.” The pride in the younger man’s voice tickled Vincent’s interest… but it was what he said that drew his attention back to the call. He waited for some elaboration and got none as –after a short pause– his employer continued with, “Uh, uh, uhh, gotta go, man! Uh, w-well look, it’s in there somewhere. I-I’m sure you’ll see it.”

Vincent tuned out the rest of the call, refocusing on the cameras even as another voice –one of the tapes, perhaps?– started to chatter away in the background about mascot suits. ‘A real one’… a real what? They couldn’t have found an actual animatronic… could they?

Camera eight answered his question… They did.

There, standing at an oddly-organic slant, was a rotten-looking rabbit animatronic, illuminated from behind by lights set up inside a loose head-turned-lantern that had once belonged to the chicken-like character named Chica. The rabbit’s eyes appeared to be glowing slightly, showing that the robot was definitely powered on.

No wonder his boss was so proud.

He stared at it for another minute before continuing to flick through the cameras… When he cycled back around to number eight, however, the rabbit was nowhere to be seen.

“…Shit.”

**~*~**

At long last, the light on the camera blinked off, allowing him to move out of its view without a care. Ever since waking from the blank daze of deactivation, he’d been avoiding the mechanical eyes as much as possible; he didn’t want to risk being sent back to the Darkness, even if the lights throughout the building threatened to blind him after he’d spent so long without any.

Freedom, no matter how restricted, was better than that.

The sound of someone talking filtered through the corridors, making his long ears twitch. His body ached to get closer, and he found himself torn… risk getting thrown back into his prison of far too long, or give in and have someone other than himself and angry ghosts to interact with…

It wasn’t much of a choice.

He needed to get closer.

Eventually, the voice stopped, but he knew approximately where it’d come from, although in its place he could hear heavy breathing. A low static hiss left his voice-box and his lower jaw opened slightly in the best approximation of a grin that he could perform. Things were getting… promising.

Another camera light flickered on and he froze in place, eyeing it and waiting for it to turn off, the inner machinery of his body kicking up a gear or two as anticipation started to fill him. In the back of his mind, his AI urged him to move –there were people, need to entertain, need to get closer, go, do it, now– but he refused until the light went dark… then he started to move faster, the need now too strong to ignore.

A different noise made him stop in his tracks. Laughter. Children’s laughter. Shudders jolted along his frame; where was it coming from? Had the ghosts returned, yet again, to send him spiralling back to the Darkness? He had to know. The people breathing loudly could wait… the children could not.

When he found the room the laughter had come from, there was nothing there. Nothing. No people, no children, no ghosts, just… more of the same animatronic parts and children’s drawings that the rest of the building had. An angry hiss left him. Had he imagined it…? It wouldn’t be the first time, if his AI was to be believed –which he didn’t, his AI was an idiot that really needed to leave him be, no wait don’t leave him all alone the Darkness is hungry!

He shook his head, temporarily sacrificing his balance just to regain his composure. Back to finding the people that actually were in the building with him… real people were infinitely better than possible-phantoms.

Getting closer to the people proved to be fairly simple, all things considered, and –with only one more laughter-detour that turned out the same as the first– he finally was able to see the source of the breathing noises. A man with dark hair and grey shirt, peering intently at the device in his hands and paying no attention to the rabbit animatronic on the other side of the window.

He tilted his head to one side, cocking his ears and placing his hands on the dirty glass, taking in the sight of a people –person, the word was ‘person’– for the first time in… too long.

A humming in his machinery intensified suddenly, and the man recoiled from the device he held, letting out a loud shout as a burnt-looking rotund doll-child seemed to leap out of it at the man’s face, screaming and vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. The lights in the building flashed red and an alarm started blaring in his ears; the man scrambled to grab another device and jabbed at it impatiently, his breath growing shorter and louder with each moment that passed. While the man was preoccupied, he slunk towards the corridor and peered into the man’s room through the doorway.

The lights finally returned to normal and the alarm silenced, his ears returned to their usual position after flicking harshly as if to shake off any lingering discomfort from the racket, and at long last… the man looked up at him; his eyes widened, mouth opening and closing a few times before managing to mutter, “Damn ventilation is going to give me a heart attack if it fails like that again…”

Slipping into the room while his AI commanded him to fulfil his programming and just do something to make the man feel better, a sense of unease halted his stride just two steps in. What was he supposed to do now? Again, he tilted his head to the side, raising a hand to wave at the man. Static crackled from his voice-box for a few moments. “Sssssprinnnngtrraaaap isssss mmmyy nnnammme… Le-le-let’s be frien-ends! ‘Tssss yourrrrsssss…?”

The man swallowed visibly, watching him almost as closely as he was being watched. “You’re… Springtrap? I never heard anything about another rabb—…” he trailed off, a strange expression twisting his features in quite a fascinating way. “…There’s no way you’re just a robot… You’re too worn-down to be working even this well.”

“Nnnnaaaaammmme?” he pressed, taking half a step closer.

“…Vincent Afton,” the man –his Friend– said, earning an ear-twitch and slow blink. “Are you supposed to be green?” he continued, reaching for one of the two devices beside him.

Springtrap’s head jerked to the left, the right, back to the left. “Gollllllldennnn…”

“…A springlock one, huh…? Now that’s old…” His Friend took a deep breath and nodded. “But who are you, really?”

He hissed, flexing his hands for a moment before shaking his head roughly. His AI and he had already had this argument. He was… he was Springtrap. The man in front of him suddenly vanished, replaced with a much younger person with much the same colouration… Younger. Child. Play. They were already Friends… that grey shirt would look much better if it were red. His face should be red, too. Everything needed to be that colour, actually… the Game demanded it be so.

“Plaaaaaaaay withhhh mmmmme…Vinnnnncennnt Aaaffftonnn… C-c-come sing-ing-ing alo-o-ong.” Holding out a hand to his Friend, he tilted his head to one side and opened his mouth in another approximated grin. When the grey-clad person made no move to take it, he felt his ears start to swivel around to point backwards; he waited just a few moments longer before letting out a louder hiss that grew into a muted screech, starting to position himself to lunge.

The laughter –that detestable laughter– sounded out again, and he whipped his head around to look at the door, then the window, and then back at his Friend…

His Friend could wait.

The children could not.

**~*~**

Vincent’s heartrate took several minutes to calm down to something approaching a regular pace, even though he managed to juggle keeping the various systems online and leading Springtrap from room to room using a recording of what he was fairly certain was the voice of the animatronic known as ‘Balloon Boy’ –who he was still reeling from having seen a macabre bastardisation of leaping at him through the camera feed…

What… just… happened?

An old springlock animatronic –one of the first pair of characters his father and Uncle Henry had made together for the Fazbear brand– had… what, come to life and wanted him to ‘play’ with it?

He frowned. No. This was something else. All of the research data he’d read through had made it plain that –for an animatronic to be acting so far out of its usual programming– there had to be someone’s ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ inside of it. A person was in that decades-old pile of nuts and bolts.

…He just hoped it wasn’t who the drawn-out voice it used reminded him of.

It was true that finding William Afton was on his to-do list, but… the thought that his father was stuck inside one of his own creations and had been who-knew-where long enough that his memory had been affected… didn’t sit right with him. Maybe, if he could get the once-golden rabbit back in speaking distance, he could press for some answers… but that would require trusting that he wouldn’t get hurt to the point of death in the process…

A rueful chuckle escaped him. The answer was obvious, really.

The things he was willing to do for his family… even kill, and even die.

“Okay, ‘Springtrap’,” Vincent said, flicking through the cameras again to start planning his approach. “Let’s play.”


	6. Scars

When no-one answered the door, he knew something was wrong. There was always someone home at the Afton household, even if only buried in blueprints and half-finished machines, or perhaps practising with a guitar in the cramped maze of an attic –and he never could understand why that particular habit existed.

If William wasn’t at one of their various business locations, then he was almost invariably at home… If his lovely wife, Angela –and Henry may have been a little biased thanks to being married to an equally-lovely lady named Pamela who just happened to be her identical twin– wasn’t working at the local high school, then she was also almost invariably at home, usually putting her dazzling skills in the kitchen to mouth-watering use…

Then there was the children, although their kids did have a tendency of slipping away… especially into the wooded area that surrounded Henry’s own home, which the rambunctious quartet –and their various collections of friends– had claimed as a sort of extended backyard, despite any and all protests from their parents.

In short, he felt justified in digging into the soil belonging to the potted plant beside the front door for a spare key. The building was quiet as he entered –far too quiet for the middle of the afternoon on Saturday, especially when his brother-in-law’s ostentatious purple car sat proudly in the driveway– and he started to search for signs of life.

Nothing in the living room, dining room, or kitchen…

Henry decided to take a chance, after grabbing a random handle from the knife block. “Anyone home?”

Silence was his answer for a few moments, then a loud clatter came from over his head; either that was a raccoon, or someone heard him. Holding his line of defence tightly in one hand, he pulled down the folding stairs that led to the attic and started to climb. As he ascended, a strange mix of dust and something that smelled a bit too much like blood met his nose, prompting him to go just that little bit faster.

The attic light was on, and there was soft unintelligible murmuring coming from behind a stack of boxes by the wall… It sounded like William.

“You up here, Will?” There was a beat of silence, before Henry could hear a muffled groan and breathy laughter. That was enough to prompt him to step around the boxes, only to drop not only his jaw but also the knife in his loosened grasp. “What’s going on here?”

His business partner was more dishevelled than he’d ever seen the man, including when they’d pulled all-nighters in university together, or any time a member of either of their families had fallen ill and William had worked himself into a minor frenzy; dressed only in a pair of old jeans, his pale skin looked even more translucent than usual under the raised marks that crisscrossed its surface in some kind of pattern… and the rivulets of red that were currently dribbling down the front of his torso. William’s dark hair stuck out in all sorts of directions, slick with what he hoped was just sweat.

Even with the blood stark on his skin, it was his eyes that froze him in place for longer than they should have… They were too bright, too wild…

“Ah, Henry… Fan—… fancy meeting you here…” William said, offering a small grin. The expression trembled and dropped completely after a second or two, however, and he lowered his gaze to the open slices on his chest and stomach. “This… is probably not what you think it is.”

That snapped him out of his daze and Henry was at his friend’s side in a heartbeat, inspecting the wounds while his mind raced trying to come up with a way to convince the stubborn man to leave the attic and let him tend to them properly. “Oh, it’s not, is it? Then what do you think this is, some kind of newfangled art form?”

“No… no, I…” he shook his head, leaning his weight against the solid warmth Henry’s body provided and giving a tiny shiver. “I don’t know if she likes art anymore…”

His jaw tightened for a moment; he wasn’t used to hearing the typically-bombastic man sound so… small. “We’re going down to the bathroom. No complaints, Will.” It was a difficult task, getting William –now trembling like a leaf– to his feet, but they managed it somehow… even the stairs were less trouble than that first step. Henry then half-carried him into the bathroom, jabbing a finger at the bathtub. “Sit,” he commanded, letting an outright frown materialise when he was met with no snarky retort.

William wrapped his arms around himself and ducked his head. “I’m sorry, Henry.”

Pausing in digging through the cupboard under the sink for the first-aid kit he knew he’d put there just a week earlier –it turned out that, for such a ‘girly-girl’, Will’s daughter was quite prone to all the minor injuries one would more expect a boy to suffer– he arched an eyebrow and sent him a hard stare. “What are you sorry for?” he asked flatly, then returned to his task. Before anything else was said, he was able to track down his prize, open it, and pull out some of the necessary tools.

“…Worrying you, I suppose… I didn’t mean to cause any concern, I just…”

“Who’s ‘she’?” Henry interrupted, wiping some of the blood away to get a better look. He felt William’s shivers intensify; pain typically didn’t seem to bother the pale man that much, but had he heard a wounded grunt or was that just his imagination?

“My… Did I ever tell you I have –had– a sister…?” he asked, angling his face just a bit higher. “She had a… an accident when we were kids and… that was the last anyone saw of her. Everyone else just… seemed to forget.” A strangled sound left his throat. “I think I miss her, sometimes. Like today… I miss her smiling, instead of being angry…”

Henry hummed, getting to work on actually cleaning and dressing the cuts; it was a good way to manufacture time to process his friend’s words, too. He was fairly certain he could remember William’s mother saying something about having had a daughter, one of the times he’d gone over to the old Afton house while looking for Will for one reason or another… but that wasn’t the part that had his mind stuck in a rut of sorts. “Missing people that’ve been lost is normal, you stupid rabbit…” he said, adding a note of teasing to his voice.

It had at least some of the desired effect, as he got a snort for his effort. “You know as well as I do that I’m not the most ‘normal’ around, you old papa bear…”

Seeing more of the man he knew poking through this foreign visage put Henry at greater ease than anything else could at that point, and he smiled for the first time since arriving. “So, what happened? Why did I find you bleeding and… no offence, Will, but completely disconnected from reality?”

He fell silent for a bit, a powerful shudder rocking his body. “I… I didn’t do it. Cassie was… No, no, this is ridiculous.” William straightened reluctantly, turning his eyes to the mirror, then he somehow paled even further.

Henry followed William’s gaze, frowned slightly, and then sighed. “Just tell me. We’ll deal with whether it makes sense afterwards.”

Another stretch of silence, another period of waiting for thoughts to be gathered into a passably-coherent sequence. Henry swallowed back the urge to groan and demand answers now, thank you very much. This was not the first time William had… been ‘odd’… nor would it be the last, no doubt. He’d known from the beginning that his friend was outside the norm –it was a large part of why he’d sought him out, back on the university campus, where he’d been out-of-place himself– and that sometimes came with bouts of creative genius that few could hope to match… or bouts of whatever this was.

Mania, perhaps.

One of William’s hands came up to trace around Henry’s work while a contemplative look settled on his face. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do any of them.” Next, it was a grimace. “Cassie did. She… she held on so tightly… It’s her birthday, today, you know? Eight, every year.” A humourless laugh seemed to tear itself from the man’s throat. “She wanted so badly to reach double-digits, so that she could be a ‘big girl’…”

“Will…” Henry began slowly, before sighing again and grabbing the man’s elbow to lead him through the house to the living room, nudging him onto the sofa and sitting down beside him. “There’s a lot of old scars, there… Are they all from the same kind of thing?”

“…As I said… Eight, every year… She wants them to be clear, I think, because she re-did a couple last time…”

“God, Will, you need help…” he breathed out, pinching the bridge of his nose. An irritated grunt was the response, and he shook his head and lowered his hand back to his lap. “Well, in any case, it’s a wonder this is the first I’ve heard of it. What does Angela think about this?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. Angie’s never really… said anything.”

Henry took off his jacket and threw it over his friend’s head, earning himself another grunt –this time with a note of amusement buried within. “Here, warmth-hogging bunny. You’ve been an ice-cube for long enough, I think.” Watching William eagerly burrow into the coat made him smile, although it faded when he noticed the other man’s shoulders shaking once again. “Something else bothering you?”

“I’m sorry…” His voice was thick with too many emotions to count, and he turned to bury his face against Henry’s upper arm. “I didn’t mean to…”

Keeping his sigh to himself was difficult, but he managed to smother and hide it by shifting to a more comfortable position and humming lowly. That was another downside of these bouts; William’s mind and emotions went completely all over the place, usually without any form of warning. He loved the man like they’d been brothers since birth, but… he could be a real handful.

Sometimes, Henry wondered what would have happened if they’d become the brothers-in-law or business partners that they were, but without having been friends beforehand… Would he be able to stand these episodes, or even just the man’s intensity? Honestly, he doubted it.

William was an idiot.

It was just fortunate that he was also a genius.

So, he could be Will’s anchor to whatever passed for ‘normal’ these days… and in return, William would be his biggest window into what could be, if normality was thrown by the wayside.


	7. Blood in the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit further along in the timeline... Basically, 'Leveret' is the only piece that's after this one, so far...

The lake’s surface was flat and mirror-like, with not a single ripple or underwater shadow disturbing the deathly serenity. Even his fishing line did nothing to break it, no matter what he did with it, and he had long since given up trying to make sense of such things.

Logic needn’t work the same way in a place as strange as this.

His joints creaked audibly as he shifted into a more comfortable position, and for what felt like the billionth time, he stared in disbelief at the hands wrapped around the pole in front of him… his hands, his fishing rod.

Red, covered in thick scaled leather… and entirely mechanical underneath.

How long had it been since they’d been made of flesh, blood, and bone? How long had it been since he’d been murdered –and on his deathbed, at that? How long had it been since he’d been the human man named David, and not… whatever this robotic crocodile was supposed to be called…?

When he’d first awakened in this bleak red and black hellscape –and found that trying to leave merely looped him back around as if he’d never left– he’d asked the rare visitor who materialised there, only to come away from his questioning with fewer answers than he had to begin with. Agony seemed to blind each automaton that came, even those who tried to bury it underneath a cheery demeanour and artificial smiles.

Eventually… he’d simply given up; crafting a rod from one of the red evergreen trees surrounding the clearing he seemed to be trapped in and sitting beside the glassy lake, he had resigned himself to an eternity of monotony and loneliness…

Then, he heard it.

Wailing, louder than any other time faint cries had sounded out between the trees or from the lake itself, and garbled strangely. Laughter followed after it, childish and malicious and so, so furious.

A shadow appeared under the water’s surface –first it appeared to be a rabbit-like figure, before reshaping into a more humanlike shape– and it seemed to be writhing in agony. David watched it for a few minutes, before deciding to see if he could reel it in and pull it out of the water.

Every cast of the line fell short or flew too far for hours –days, months, years, he couldn’t tell anymore– almost as if something was deliberately making it harder for him to hook the shadow… and all the while the wailing continued, tortured and torturous. He almost got used to the noise, the pleas for help, the screaming for a ‘Henry’ or a ‘Mike’ to save them… the wild roars proclaiming their hatred…

It was better than the rarely-broken silence he’d existed in for so long. Anything was better than that.

At last, his hook caught on something, and he froze for a moment. Had he finally snagged his target? A quick glance seemed to confirm it, and he eagerly set about bringing in his catch. A new set of cries made him flinch –a child’s voice, strangely familiar, angrily hissing that he shouldn’t be doing anything to the shadow– but he ignored them; the potential for a new and maybe even permanent conversation partner was too great a lure to resist for the benefit of a child he probably didn’t actually know…

Slowly but surely, the shadow was pulled closer, until a purple-clad back breached the lake’s surface. Then, a dark-haired head appeared, and the garbled wails suddenly became clear. He fought back a grimace and heaved, throwing his catch to a patch of onyx-coloured grass several strides away. Waiting a few moments for the figure to possibly gain their bearings –they didn’t, the only thing they did was replace their wails with rapid mumbling and curl up into a tight ball of lanky limbs and powerful shudders– David tilted his head to one side, then he stood and made his way over to his new visitor.

They gave no hint that they’d even realised he was there… until he reached out to retrieve the hook…

One shudder rocked their body –stronger than any of the others– and they frantically scrambled away from his clawed digits, his catch crouched low to the ground… almost as if to hunch over to protect their vulnerable organs… or to launch themselves at him like some kind of wild animal. He paused, locking eyes with the newcomer and taking the time to inspect their appearance now that it had been bared to him.

His visitor was a human man, tall and thin and pale but for the shock of grey-peppered black hair and beard, blood and scars littering what skin he could see through tattered purple shirt and torn pants. He was almost willing to go out of his way to comfort the man… then he realised something that made his non-existent blood start to boil.

Those eyes –so wild and almost completely inhuman– were so familiar… So, so familiar…

“…William…” he croaked, feeling a hiss leave his mouth when a flicker of recognition flitted across the man’s face. How long had it been… since they’d last met…? Since he’d felt the full weight of his sins, his oversights regarding the man before him –still tethered to his fishing line, which he gave a harsh tug without a second thought…

A muffled grunt of pain was his only reward, even as the hook tore free from William’s body. Once freed from the line, the scarred man hurriedly got to his feet and began putting even more distance between them, pale eyes never straying far from David’s long tooth-filled snout. He barely made it to the tree-line before reappearing on the other side of the lake.

“There’s no escape, that way… Come, sit, we have _much_ to discuss…” he growled, returning to his previous spot by the water’s edge, slapping one hand on the grass beside him.

William made no move to obey, so tense that the shudders that continued to wrack his body were clearly visible, even at that distance. “…Who are you?” His voice was deeper than last time, gruff and scratchy from the screaming, and dripping with enough venom to slaughter an entire city.

Setting his rod down, he let out a snort. “Oh? You don’t recognise me? I’m almost hurt… You did kill me, after all.”

“Why would that help? I killed a lot of people,” came the retort, coupled with a burst of almost manic laughter. “I don’t remember who you could possibly be… What did I do? How did I kill you? Planning on doing the same to me? Who knows, maybe that’ll jog my memory a little? It’s not like I can just die, here, though, so… _so sorry about that_!”

He felt sick, hearing those words. Just how far had the other man sunk into depravity? Into madness? “I only know of one other that you killed. Your sister –you told us that, yourself…”

More laughter, disturbed giggling that wouldn’t have been out of place coming from some kind of demon, and William wrapped his arms around himself as the shudders grew even more intense than before. “That doesn’t sound like me, no, no, no, not at all… I think you’ve got the wrong bunn—… per-person…” A sound like a sob tore from his throat. “I don’t… I really think you’ve mistaken me for someone else…”

“I know I haven’t, William.”

“I’m not—…! That’s not—...! Just tell me who you are!” The scarred man’s eyes flashed a vivid almost-impossible purple, and he grit his teeth in an animalistic snarl.

“Very well,” he said, watching him closely. “My name was once David… and you’ve known me for practically your entire life…” Confusion took root in William’s expression at that, an emotion that he quickly covered up with a mask of irritation and apathy –still trying not to show any weaknesses… it almost made him want to grab the pale man by the throat and shake. “So, tell me, do you still not know?”

“No, I don’t.” William snapped. He took a step away from the lake –from him– but crumpled to the ground with a hiss. “If you’re not going to do anything, like any of the others, then leave me be…” The shudders increased again, and his hands flew up to grip his head, a broken-sounding whimper escaping him before he managed to silence it. “I… I don’t have time… I can’t _be_ here! I can’t watch what they’re doing from here…! I can’t—…!”

He sighed, feeling a shred of pity for the distorted mess that the other man had become, even if he didn’t understand how or why it had gotten so bad. One thing that was obvious, however, was that William wouldn’t come to him; he got back to his feet and started to walk around the lake. “Whatever happened there… isn’t going to happen here. This place is quiet, for the first time in a while, and I get so few visitors…”

William didn’t move except to curl tighter into himself once again, even when his red-scaled feet came to a stop beside him and he lowered his mechanical body to the grass; even resting a hand on top of that dark shock of hair –matted with sweat and blood and oil– elicited nothing other than a harsh flinch. Quiet whispers reached David’s ears, and he concentrated.

“…—ntime Foxy at two –is it two, yet? Can’t check… Toy Freddy was playing –did that damn vacuum cleaner get him again? Did… did… did Liz—… did Baby move yet…?”

“I suppose you’ve been facing some form of hell, out there… It’s no less than you deserve, you know. You can’t kill someone and expect to face no consequences… that just isn’t the way the world works. Even less when you kill… how many?” he asked, angling his head to peer at what little of William’s face he could see. Those piercing –feverish– eyes caught his own dark sockets.

“…I don’t know… I… I lost count…”

David’s fingers twitched, dragging his claws against William’s scalp; it stuck him as odd that a simple touch could make the man tremble or flinch, but something that should have hurt… did no such thing. It was almost as if the new dribbling tracks of blood were commonplace. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that… then, the anger and disgust that had made him move in the first place surged back to the surface. “Then you truly do deserve to experience hell.”

William was silent for a few minutes, before releasing his head and uncurling his body into a more typical sitting position with a quiet chuckle. “Do you know what the really funny thing is…? I’ve seen _me_, back there, hunting me with the rest of them. I can’t even be safe from myself in that place…”

“I wouldn’t call that ‘funny’…”

“I can understand why most of them would want that…” he continued, as if David hadn’t said anything. “I… I killed them. So many, so, so many…” Trailing off into silence, William’s hands came up to wrap loosely around his own throat, his fingers trembling and twitching like a cluster of live wires. “…David… That sounds almost familiar…”

He let out a snort. “It should. It’s your middle name, because of me.” Paying no mind to the sceptical look thrown his way, he shrugged, trying not to let his curiosity shatter the strange sense of fractured calmness that hung over their heads. The pale man’s body started to shake again, and his hands slid up and around his neck to interlace behind it, pulling his head down at the same time as his knees came up towards his chest. “Take some time to breathe, William. You may deserve to suffer for your actions, but that doesn’t mean it’s wise to just forget to breathe.”

Another chuckle was the immediate response. “I shouldn’t even need to do it… Why would an animatronic need to breathe, after all?”

“You’re human, more or less.” He’d almost forgotten about that capacity to miss his points so completely…

William hissed through gritted teeth, detangling himself and shaking David’s hand off of his head. “No. No, I’m not.” Pushing himself back to his feet, the scarred man took a shaky step away from him, swiping idly at a trail of blood that had dribbled close to an eye. “I was never human, I’m just a bunn—… Even if I was, at some point, I’m not anymore…”

David let out a low growl, the hand he’d offered to comfort his unexpected visitor clenching into a fist. ‘Even if he was’? ‘Never human’? Just what had happened to the man’s mind? It was one thing to fall into the madness of a dangerous predator, it was another thing entirely to lose sight of one’s own species… William’s body tensed up again, slipping quickly into a defensive stance, prompting him to force a deep breath of his own and pointedly rest both hands against his thighs. “I’m not going to attack you, William. Sit back down… or, I suppose, take a swim. It’s how the others who visited me left.”

That drew his attention to the lake, pale eyes seeming to glow in the odd light of the clearing as he regarded the water with overt suspicion. “…Maybe drowning will get me out of this whole place…” he mused, his voice thick with fresh emotion. William’s fingers twitched again, and he started to walk purposefully towards the water. “What’s the worst that could happen…?”

He said nothing as the other man’s head sunk below the glassy water, merely returning to the spot he’d left his fishing rod and settling himself down for some more of the same routine. The wails returned, all the louder for their absence… Perhaps he’d ‘catch’ William again sometime, and ask him about those he cried out for, but that could wait; his temper had flared during that short conversation more often than it had for what had to have been years, and he needed time to regain his equilibrium.

Even when William was just a child, he’d always been skilled at getting under his skin… but despite that, despite the sheer wrongness of what he’d done throughout his lifetime… David couldn’t help but to harbour some lingering sympathy and even love for his son.


	8. Mea Culpa

The building was as quiet as a grave, making Henry’s skin crawl. He found himself tiptoeing through each room, as if making just that little bit too much noise would attract unwanted attention straight to his location; nothing came hunting when he startled a bunch of rats into a squeaky frenzy, nor when he stepped on the remains of a broken light bulb, but the sensation refused to leave… An air of death hung heavy over the entire place, and twinges of guilt stabbed him in the chest at the thought of having any responsibility for any of it.

When William had shown up on the doorstep with Michael in tow, asking for Henry and his wife to watch over the young man ‘for a while’, he’d been suspicious enough… then he hadn’t been in touch for an entire day.

That was unheard of for him.

Checking on the struggling Freddy’s pizzeria had come from nothing more than a hunch, but it was the best idea he could come up with when looking in their underground research facility had yielded no results. Slowly, Henry made his way from one end of the building to the other, and that’s when he saw it…

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, all strewn about the floor in pieces, with the door to the nearby saferoom sitting wide open. Those rooms hadn’t seen real use since the days when the company still used human performers.

He was struck with a sudden powerful urge to simply turn on his heel and walk away –to abandon his search and refuse this new development any brain power or time– but his feet carried him to the open doorway, and his nose was assaulted with a potent scent that he recognised instantly… and wished fervently that he didn’t.

Blood. Lots and lots of blood.

Leaning against the wall was a Spring Bonnie suit, its colour dimmed from the original brilliant gold, and stained with a deep crimson liquid that leaked from seemingly every crevice…

His gut told him that his search for his friend was over, that the person inside –no doubt already bled dry– was William Afton. Henry took a few unsteady strides into the saferoom, his hands raised in the direction of the rabbit suit, before stopping himself in his tracks. Why were the other animatronics torn to pieces? Why had he donned the suit once again? Why had he –of all people– fallen prey to its lethal shortcomings?

…Why should he do anything about this…?

Henry’s breath caught in his throat and his eyes began to sting. He still loved William as a brother, but… with him dead, there was a possibility that he and Pamela could finally move on with their lives, onto something that didn’t reek of blood and death, and so could William’s own sons…

The nightmare might finally end.

He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

Stopping their research into Remnant might be like going cold turkey for a lifelong smoker, but he was certain he could do it. It was William who did most of the work, anyway –the actual abductor, the actual killer… the real monster of the two of them. In comparison, Henry was practically a saint, and, truthfully, he’d been feeling uneasy about the experiments ever since his own daughter’s death, yet the allure of Remnant’s potential had blinded him.

This was like the wake-up call he so desperately needed.

Henry paused, staring at the mess of parts belonging to the others, and made a decision. Those, he’d take. One last hurrah, one last experiment, one less way for the company he no longer held much sway in to revive the whole thing inadvertently…

He’d melt them down and infuse them into the ones still kept below ground, then see about putting that bunch out of their misery next… continuing until there were none left. Then, and only then, would he let himself fade away into relative obscurity; he knew he should say something to the authorities, but fear had kept his mouth shut until then, and he saw no way out of that now.

What could he even say?

His brother-in-law had convinced him it was a good idea to delve into the secrets of the human soul?

It didn’t matter how he twisted it, even in his own mind… Henry was still the one to voice those thoughts first… ‘What if it was a human?’

William had become like a wild beast from that moment onwards. Eager to hunt, eager to take, eager to kill, wasn’t this what Henry wanted, didn’t they need just one more spirit to test theories on… and it just had to be children, as most of the adults they tried didn’t seem to have the same capacity to remain…

He felt bile rise up, and a hand flew to cover his mouth. Just how many had lost their lives because of that blind curiosity? How much blood did he have to atone for helping that man shed? Henry didn’t even notice the sobs that wracked his body until he could barely breathe through them and he’d crumpled to the floor with an armful of broken parts.

How pained, confused, and angry they must all be…

Crafting nightmares to keep Michael away from the animatronics should have been more than enough of a sign that things were getting out of hand, especially after the death of William’s daughter to one of the other robots… Both Elizabeth and Mike had been too curious about them, had loved them too much…

They should have stopped then.

“I’m so sorry…” he gasped out, hoping –praying– that it could somehow reach the ears of their victims. “I should have stopped him… I should have stopped us both…”

Henry lost track of time while he gathered up the pieces of those four animatronics, his movements slow and his body still shuddering under the weight of his guilt. Not sparing any glances for the saferoom door was difficult… something deep inside of him still wanted to do whatever he could to help his old friend… but when one is dealing with a tumour, healing tends to start with cutting it out of the body. Maybe, just maybe, caring about William was similar enough…

By the time he’d bundled everything into his car, he was already running phone numbers through his mind, trying to remember which contractor Fazbear Entertainment may have used to seal up most of the saferooms in the other locations.

If he had to –if he had the heart to– he’d just set the building on fire, instead.


End file.
